A new report in this month’s issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Sexuality finds that sexual orientation can be changed — and that psychological care for individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions is generally beneficial and that research has not found significant risk of harm.

The study, conducted by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), examined more than 100 years of professional and scientific literature from 600-plus studies and reports from clinicians, researchers and former clients principally published in professional and peer-reviewed journals.

The problem with all that? Well first of all, this isn’t a study at all. It doesn’t consist of an experiment with study participants, methodology, measurements, analysis or results. Instead, according to this so-called journal — which I have a copy of — NARTH mined nearly 100 years of research on attempts to change sexual orientation. Of course, the vast majority of those studies were done when aversion therapy was commonly practiced, when many people sought therapy because they were convicted of homosexual offenses before Lawrence v. Texas to avoid jail, when few clinicians bothered to do any kind of follow-up, and when the APA still considered homosexuality a mental illness. Much of this paper is an updated regurgitation of several other articles already posted on NARTH’s web site.

Also, the so-called “peer reviewed” journal is not actually a journal. The Journal of Human Sexuality is actually a booklet published by NARTH themselves. In fact, it’s structured more like a book than a journal, with only one article whose title matches the title on the front cover. This journal is billed as “volume 1,” and was, according to its acknowledgment, conceived back when Joseph Nicolosi was still president at NARTH. At this rate, I would expect volume 2 to show up sometime in 2011.

This is very similar to another stunt pulled by George A. Rekers in 1996. He too created a one-off journal, also called The Journal of Human Sexuality which seems never to have made it to a second volume. It looks like NARTH decided to recycle Rekers old idea.

And as for this new journal’s “peer reviewed” status? Well, I guess when you have a paper written by an anti-gay activist posing as a therapist, and you send that paper off to other anti-gay activists posing as therapists, all of whom are members of your tight little NARTH club with no possibility of an actual independent review taking place, then maybe I would have to concede that the effort was “peer reviewed.” Unfortunately, that’s not the definition accepted by the scientific community.

This publication is not a dispassionate study of changes in sexual orientation. It is a cannon-blast of anti-gay animus in a long 94-page screed, a veritable anti-gay propaganda omnibus touching on all sorts of unrelated subjects including HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, psychiatric disorders, and “promiscuity as the new social norm.” As far as anti-gay propaganda goes, there’s little that’s missing here.

Anyone can write a “journal” and select the studies to prove their point as I illustrated in my satire, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.” (Hey, I had my partner read it before I published it; that must mean it’s peer-reviewed!) A quick look at NARTH’s “journal” shows that they pulled the same tactics as I did when I wrote my satire. Unfortunately, they didn’t intend for their publication to be read for satirical purposes. They are pushing it as legitimate science, and others are likely to be taken in by it.

Over the next several months — it is, after all, 94 pages of text — we will be going into greater detail to show just what a fraud this so-called journal really is. Stay tuned.

They have the scientific standards of creationists:
1. screach about how you have proof of your BS.
2. ignore/ban from commenting anyone who points out you have no evidence.
3. shove some sciencey sounding words into your usual drivel, put it onto paper, claim to have a ‘scientific publication’
4. send it to someone who already agrees with you on everything, call it ‘peer review’
5. get used by some idiot biblethumping congressman from the bible belt/former confederacy *not suprisingly the exact same areas* as ‘scientific’ evidence we should teach christianity as fact/treat gays like crap.

I think I have a copy of that George Rekers Journal of Human Sexuality just in case you need it. And also, my guess is that this “non-story” will be getting play in various religious right circles (including One News Now).

That’s how they do it – create a phony story and use the echo chamber to give it credibility.

I constantly ask myself when will well-known honest Christians call these people out on their deliberate, intentional, and blatant lies? NARTH, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, and so many others intentionally deceive their followers – there’s just no way around it, as “The Heterosexual Agenda” and other publications demonstrate.

It is high time we start pressuring the honest and decent evangelical leaders to publicly denounce such dishonest tactics.

It is high time we start pressuring the honest and decent evangelical leaders to publicly denounce such dishonest tactics.

Patrick, as much as I want to believe they’re out there, where are the “honest and decent evangelical leaders”? Why don’t they speak up? Are they afraid, or is this issue under the radar for them? Penguinsaur’s comparison to creationism is spot-on. It represents yet another area where a large number of very vocal evangelicals push blatantly dishonest statements, and while I want to believe there are honest evangelicals who are embarrassed by this theyâ€™re not speaking up.

Incidentally, if you want to find the Rekers â€œjournalâ€ from 1996, there are at least twelve libraries around the country that have copies. While having it in their holdings doesnâ€™t constitute approval or disapproval (itâ€™s part of every good libraryâ€™s mission to have a broad spectrum of material, after all) I find it interesting that one third of the libraries are part of religious colleges. They are:

I am a heterosexual woman, but I hate NARTH, Focus on the Family and all the other religous rights groups. They tick me off to no end with their negative attitudes and hatred towards blacks, hispanics, immigrants, and the LGBT community. If anyone on this site has any idea of how we can marginalize, decrease, or get rid of these fools’ interference in our government, please suggest something, anything. They are an embarrassment to all Americans. They call themselves Christians, but in reality, are the biggest hypocrites in our society. If I could wave a majic wand and rid America of these hatemongerers, I’d do it in a NY minute. They are also some of the biggest lawbreakers in this country because they they believe the 1st Amendment gives them the right to impose their beliefs on all Americans. They just will not accept that America is not a theocracy.

Well, I’m a homosexual man and I don’t hate NARTH, because I find much of what they say about homosexuality to be accurate, or at least closer to the truth than what gay activists have to say.

If anything should be an embarrassment to Americans, it’s the unthinking acceptance of the gay activist line that homosexuality is “normal”, unchangeable, and bioloigcally innate by so many self-identified liberals, who very rarely take the trouble to study the subject properly or consider less gay-positive points of view objectively. However politically convenient that line may be, they can’t keep it going indefinitely, and it will eventually backfire on them.

If they want to take the trouble to study the subject properly, then I would hardly have thought that reading NARTHâ€™s â€œJournal of Human Sexualityâ€ was the way to go about it. As the Irishman said, â€œWell, I wouldnâ€™t start from here.â€

Well, I suppose that if a useful compendium of unproven, superannuated theories and useless â€œcuresâ€ is wanted, just as a fascinating historical background, then the Journal of Human Sexuality would probably fill the bill. It would save one the trouble of finding and wading through all those out-of-print tomes by Bergler, Bieber etc. (In the same way, someone interested in the history of medicine might study Culpeperâ€™s Herbal and John Wesleyâ€™s Primitive Physic.)

quo, Iâ€™m assuming (and please correct me if Iâ€™m wrong) that youâ€™re the same person who has previously posted on here under the name â€œquo IIIâ€. Where have all these NARTH theories got you? From previous posts of yours, it seems that they have made you bitter against your parents â€“ but maybe you were already, and there may have been other reasons for your being so; only you can know about that. But what else have they done for you? Your remark, â€œWell, Iâ€™m a homosexual manâ€, shows that your homosexuality remains â€œunrepairedâ€. Isnâ€™t it time for you to accept what youâ€™ve got and move on? Life doesnâ€™t last for ever. And donâ€™t forget Jesusâ€™s parable about burying your talents in the ground.

I donâ€™t believe for one moment that my parents caused my homosexuality, but IF I did become so convinced, then I would say to them (hoping that they can hear me wherever they are now): â€œMum and Dad, you did a bloody good job of it. Thank you. Thank you a thousand times.â€

Quo, you ask everyone else to approach the issues objectively and listen to “all sides”, but you seem unwilling to do that yourself. You criticize “self-identified liberals, who very rarely take the trouble to study the subject properly or consider less gay-positive points of view objectively” but provide no evidence that these supposed liberals you’re criticizing have failed to study the issues objectively.

When prevented with evidence that NARTH has done exactly what you accuse “self-identified liberals” of doing you conveniently ignore it.

When and how exactly do you think all this will backfire? Perhaps all their lies will eventually backfire on NARTH. They certainly seem to have a hard time finding support even now.

Oh, Quo. I usually don’t feed trolls, but as someone who was forced to visit the good Dr. Nicolosi’s office at 15, I must beg to differ with you. Everything that NARTH claims is outdated Freudian drivel. They have to go back into the earliest reaches of the last century for the reasoning behind their arguments.

Dr. Nicolosi’s intern only spent time trying to make my parents feel as though they had screwed up raising me, and make me feel like a defective human being. Thankfully, I was smart enough to see through the ‘mommy makes you a sissy and daddy doesn’t make you a man’ tripe that NARTH tries to peddle as pseudoscience. Oh well, their days are fortunately numbered. The longer we’re out, and visible, the less people will believe their lies.

It’s obvious from some of the posts here that orgs like NARTH Exodus and Evergreen still manage to maintain a deathgrip on some people’s psyches. I pity them–don’t they know it’s all about extracting money from them and their parents?

Well, quo, I finally find out something about you that I must have missed before. You’re a gay man– excuse me, you’re a homosexual. I would never have guessed. I just thought you were a garden variety bigot. Surprise, you are a carefully taught homosexual. And, as you know, you must be carefully taught.

so, here are two related questions for you to answer, the first of a pile of them I hope you will answer. Pulled from Boys in the Band, it seems particularly apropos, especially since you didn’t answer my previous lengthy essay directed towards you and your good buddy Dick Wood.

Why do you hate yourself so much? And why are you so invested in it? Actually, I know the answers. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Transactional Analysis!

And along the same lines, why is it so necessary to you that other gay people hate themselves as much as you do? and why, a la exodus, NARTH, and the whole of the AXIS (Anti-eX-gay-Industry-Stupidity) powers, is it necessary that people in general hate gay people, or at least deny them normal participation in society?

DADT doesn’t go far enough, in your opinion. Why? Are YOU so unfit to serve? Can YOU not be trusted in the showers? Are YOU such a misfit that you can undermine unit cohesion? Can you say “projection”? Does any of North’s psychobabble include studies on THAT?

Are YOU such a danger to family, children, faith, freedom, and all that is decent and holy in the world that YOU should not be allowed to marry another man? You give yourself far more credit, and powers far beyond those of mortal men. Actually, no you don’t! NARTH does, because then they can deal with their own demons. and make money out of it to boot. And get a bit of social approval from people who would otherwise despise them. It’s a win-win-win situation, except for the victims.

You wrote this: “itâ€™s the unthinking acceptance of the gay activist line that homosexuality is â€œnormalâ€, unchangeable, and biologically innate by so many self-identified liberals, who very rarely take the trouble to study the subject properly or consider less gay-positive points of view objectively.”

Since NARTH speaks the truth, why are you STILL homosexual? Shouldn’t you be heterosexual by now? Is it possible for you to consider, given that you haven’t changed, that your homosexuality may in fact be innate, but your self-hatred is not? Your problem is not your homosexuality, your problem is your self hatred. Fix that, and I think your “objections” will easily give way to an improvement called OBJECTIVITY.

Here’s something for you to consider as well. I’m not gay positive because I am not objective, because I have failed to consider the garbage the AXIS powers produce in their quests to earn a living, punish themselves for who they are, or anything else. I’m gay positive because in my 59 years, I’ve seen next to nothing of the gay-negative stuff prove to be anything but plain old bigotry, whether dressed up in its Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, or admitted for what it is– fear and hatred.

I will freely admit, because I am objective, that there are some things in the “gay lifestyle” that I think are bad– sexual promiscuity among SOME gay men, for example. And I say that as a former, major, big-time slut. But I love my husband and my totally monogamous marriage of seven years. I’m also objective enough to realize that the Church and the AXIS powers have spent decades, if not centuries and millennia, doing everything they can to make sure that we gay people are as marginalized, stereotyped, repressed, and as deviant-ified as possible. They’ve succeeded brilliantly with you, much to your detriment. (William’s advice that you just move on is quite good. You should follow it). Not surprisingly at all, when such major efforts are made to marginalize, the objects of the marginalization react as they are expected to. It’s just basic sociology, which I happen to have a couple of degrees in, and one of the things that taught me about– guess what?– objectivity.

Teach gay men that their lives are worthless, that they are deviants, that their lives are only about sex and sexual gratification, and that nothing else, especially true and abiding love, is possible for them. Allow them to be men and act as many men would if given the opportunity, and then act surprised and shocked– SHOCKED!!!!– that that is how they behave. The REAL surprise is that so many gay people have rejected that pernicious, vicious nonsense over the centuries, and more and more are doing so all the time. We have a whole generation that is growing up with a brand new idea– that they can live normal, fulfilled lives. Too bad you can’t. Your life would be so much better. And the Catholic church could actually be doing something for the poor, as Jesus demanded, rather than paying out billions of dollars because of its pedophile priests. Jesus said NOTHING about that.

As I’ve said in another context, the real surprise is that so many gay relationships, and gay people, succeed and thrive despite all of the social forces arrayed against them, while so many heterosexual relationships– and people– fail despite all of the social forces arrayed to support them. That alone is sufficient evidence about the innateness of homosexuality, that it is neither better nor worse than being hetero. It just IS, and THAT is objectivity for you!

I’m gay positive because I recognize a shoddy defense of flim-flam when I see it. I’m gay positive because I have seen very little in my life that supports that flim flam. And the little that does can be traced to the hatred, fear, self-loathing, and their expression and support through religious and spiritual idiocy, not through anything innately connected with being gay. There is not one true thing that could be said about gay people in general that could not be said about straight people in general except this– we prefer members of our own sex for love, sex, and romance. And even that, thanks to Ted Haggard and his ilk, is not as true as it might be. Anything after that, you’re just making it up. And what you’re making up just boils down to one of three statements: I hate queers, my religion tells me to hate queers, or anything about sex scares the living bejesus out of me.

Eliminate what is so carefully taught, and you will finally come up with a new reality– gay people will finally be no better– and no worse– than straight people.

Quo, its not a good idea to “listen to all sides” when one side is clearly wrong. Most people wouldn’t entertain the KKK’s views on race equality and by the same token Narth’s attempts to oppress gays are best ignored as well.

Another creationist tactic:
Whine about how ‘rude’, ‘uncivil’ or ‘close-minded’ people are for not considering your ‘theory’ on equal grounds with the conclusion reached by about 99% of scientists. Keep whining about this no matter how many facts you are pelted with, its not about the evidence *they have none* or the arguments *can be torn apart by a child* or that your ‘scientific’ theory is blatant religious propoganda. Nope, its all about how mean the other guys are.
PS: Always have some internet credentials to back you up. If your arguing that the world is 6000 years old, you have a degree in geology. Evolution is fake, biology degree. For lies about gays you can clame to be a psychologist or a homosexual yourself.

I was going to respond to Quo, but then I read Ben in Oakland. Totall PWNAGE! Ben, you win the internets today.

My favorite quotes:

“DADT doesnâ€™t go far enough, in your opinion. Why? Are YOU so unfit to serve? Can YOU not be trusted in the showers? Are YOU such a misfit that you can undermine unit cohesion?”

I workout six days a week, and sorry to report, I’m not fullfilling my sexual duty to harass and oggle the other men. I’m always so busy peeing, showering, and putting on my clothes that I just never find the time to rape anyone. Sorry.

“Are YOU such a danger to family, children, faith, freedom, and all that is decent and holy in the world that YOU should not be allowed to marry another man?”

Couldn’t agree more. I dispute all these lies because I know I’m no threat, and I know none of my gay friends are a threat. Apparently Quo IS a THREAT, which says more about him and the company he keeps than it does about the gay community at large.

“We have a whole generation that is growing up with a brand new ideaâ€“ that they can live normal, fulfilled lives.”

Yeah, when I was their age (and I’m just turning 32 this past 07/04) I always assumed I’d be dead by 22 because of a hate crime or AIDS. The idea of dating, forming a relationship, making a commitment, and doing all of that with the approval of my parents (and his) was beyond me. Good thing I didn’t stop there as I wouldn’t have just celebrated my 3rd Anniversary with my partner.

“Iâ€™ve seen next to nothing of the gay-negative stuff prove to be anything but plain old bigotry, whether dressed up in its Sunday-go-to-meetinâ€™ clothes, or admitted for what it isâ€“ fear and hatred.”

Agreed, there are some very sweet, nice, precocious little bigots out there. I like to remind people that there were really nice slave owners who disagreed with freeing the slaves, really nice husbands who didn’t want their wives and daughters voting — bigotry is sometimes really nice and uses pretty words like “no offense” before being so offensive there are no kind words for it. That’s why a lot of the anti-gay orgs have dropped the full frontal “KILL FAGS” rhetoric, even though they probably would turn the other way if a hate crime happened right in front of them.

Wow Jason, SOMEone’s been hanging around /b/ on 4chan… or EncyclopÃ¦dia Dramatica… Freaky.

Anyway, I don’t think we should respond to Quo anymore. Obvious troll is obvious. Why this homosexual-NARTH-admirer-but-still-not-straight man spends so much time flaming a gay blog is beyond me, but usually trolls are in it for teh lulz. And even though Quo (in all his incarnations) is pretty much a LOLcow himself, I don’t think we should provide him with anymore of said lulz.

In otherwords, ignore it because it’s so stoo-pid.

Such a sad, sad man – who stuffs its brain with thoughts of heterosexual soldiers having to face big bad potential gay oglers/rapists in the showers – doesn’t need our attention.

Studying any subject properly means listening carefully to all sides, and reading the Journal of Human Sexuality is part of what that should involve.

You are correct that one must consider all input.

And that is exactly what we do here at Box Turtle Bulletin. We are in the process of reviewing NARTH’s booklet and identifying whether there is anything in it that adds any value to the conversation.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we should be foolish. History tells us that NARTH is not a credible source, that their participants are self-deceiving, that they employ cherry-picking, and that their methods are to start with their conclusion and search for anything that might support such a conclusion if it were distorted, exagerated, and taken out of context.

All of which is to say that we do indeed consider NARTH’s opinion. But we certainly don’t start with the assumption that it is credible or honest.

Because, Quo, unlike you we do not base our observations on whether the source is “liberal” or increase our belief in them if they baselessly condemn gay people.

And Emily, I’m going to disagree with you– up to a point. I think it is worthwhile to respond to quo, even though he has shown repeatedly that when he is big-time challenged, his usual response is to slink away, only to try to peddle his wares on another thread.

I write to quo partly to challenge him, and partly because I am a caring human being who does not want to see another life and soul sacrificed on the altar of the Great God Homobigot. Not even quo, because his self-hatred is not his fault, though I hope that at some point I hope he will understand that it is his responsibility.

There have been too many of these quo-boys already, and I want it stopped. Now.

I write to quo because I am short a brother, who wrapped his whole life around his self-hatred, before he died alone, either of murder or suicide or both, in a Mexican desert seven years ago. I will resent the theft of my brother for as long as I breathe, and I will do what I can against the homobigots to make sure that not one more person is deprived of someone they love because of NARTH Vader and his merry band of homobigots.

But you know who I really write for? For that gay boy or gay girl who reads what we have to say here, who doesn’t respond or post, but who thinks. My hope is that they will see the destructiveness of self-hatred, and so choose to avoid that path for themselves.

I have long maintained that we gay positives– thanks to quo for that one!– will never reach those who are irretrievably poisoned by hate, fear, stupidity, or religious and spiritual idiocy. Nor is it our job to do so, because that it the definition of irretrievably. It takes a Bobby Griffith sort of a moment to reach those people, and apparently for many of them, even that will not suffice. But there are those we can reach, and maybe for them prevent them from being another Bobby.

Who knows? It may even be possible for quo.

And quo, if you’re reading this– and I have no doubt that you are– I suggest you read a book by CS Lewis called “The Great Divorce.” To my mind, it describes your dilemma to a T, though in a manner completely opposite to what you might expect. It all depends on what you consider heaven, and what you consider hell.

At the risk of turning all this into a love-fest, I feel compelled to thank everyone for their thoughtful and intelligent responses to Quo. I won’t name specific people at the risk of leaving someone out.

One of the reasons I visit this blog regularly is because the current news interests me but I also find the comments insightful and thought-provoking. I know I’ve gone on to have conversations in which I’ve paraphrased or repeated verbatim some of the comments I’ve read here as though I’d come up with them myself. I apologize for that, although if you copy from one source it’s “plagiarism”–if you copy from several it’s “research”.

The idea is that they make fun of and shock anything, everything, and everybody. It’s also anti-bigot, anti-jewish, anti-christian, anti-atheist, anti-woman, anti-man, anti-science, anti-religion, anti-good, anti-evil, EVERYTHING.

Ben is right. It is both run by basement dwellers and mocking of basement dwellers. But if you want to know about the depths of internet culture and chatspeak, they’re the ones.

It’s melted parts of my brain. And I’ve seen things that I can never un-see. But it’s helped me with a lot of research and understanding of internet culture I’ve done. And despite its vile imagery and astonishing lack of tact or appreciation for any kind of fathomable decency, I find it horrifyingly fascinating.

I don’t mean to pile on you, quo, but I find I didn’t really ask you something i intended to.

If Narth Vader speaks the truth about gay people, why do so few real people– you know, liberals, pflaggers, unitarians, the 48% of California voters who said no to prop H8, and such– actually believe what it has to say?

And if they are not speaking the truth, why do you hang around people who have such a low opinion of you? Becuase if you are a homosexual, all the garbage they speak is aobut YOU.

“Quo doesnâ€™t answer the questions put to him because heâ€™s afraid he wonâ€™t be able to avoid the truth if he does.”

No, the actual reason I’m not answering them is because they’re generally off-topic (eg, about me personally) and I’m worried that Jim will step in and stop the discussion or ban me from commenting here if I continue it.

This is a serious worry, even though most of what I have said has been no more off-topic than what other people have been saying – generally predictable comments of the, “Oooh, isn’t NARTH awful”, kind.

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.